‘He,’ ‘She,’ ‘They’ and Us

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Pronoun accuracy was central to the reporting of a recent story about a transgender student.CreditCreditSally Ryan for The New York Times

By Raillan Brooks

April 5, 2017

Anemona Hartocollis, a higher education reporter for The Times, admits that, at first, the term “transgender girl” threw her. Before following Katherine Boone, an 18-year-old Syracuse high school student, through her sex reassignment surgery in 2015, Ms. Hartocollis did not know whether the term applied to people who identify as female or as male (the answer is the former). “It’s a system of nomenclature you have to be educated in,” she said. There are a few basics, but perhaps the most fundamental: Use a person’s preferred pronoun, whether it’s he, she, both or none of the above.

Coverage of transgender issues is becoming ever more a part of the political conversation, whether it is about access to health care, representation on film and TV or which bathrooms trans people are allowed to use. As these types of stories arise more frequently, reporters are among those confronting the limitations of modern vocabulary.

Over the last few decades, The Times has changed the way it writes about transgender men and women. In the 1999 edition of the newspaper’s style manual, for example, the term “transgender” wasn’t included — “transsexual,” a term disliked by many for its pathological connotations, appears instead. By the 2013 edition, however, “transgender” appears prominently.

Grammar conventions are shifting just as quickly. Efforts to introduce nonstandard pronouns, some of which date to as early as the 1850s, have generated a vast array of alternatives, none of which have taken off, including “xe,” “ze,” “phe,” “er,” “ou.” In 1884, several newspapers tried to make “thon” happen. And increasingly, courtesy titles like “Mr.” and “Ms.” are having to make room for novel varieties like “Mx.” — pronounced “mix.” Today, many transgender people prefer the conventional “he” or “she,” but those who have adopted “they,” “them” and “theirs” as personal pronouns have become much more visible. Both The Washington Post and The Associated Press recently began permitting the singular “they” in their reporting on a case-by-case basis.

A similar principle exists at The Times. Style guidelines have long stipulated that reporters ought to use the names, pronouns and courtesy titles preferred by the subject. But those guidelines were built around the assumption that subjects would identify as either male or female, and the nonbinary terminology that has emerged is unfamiliar to many readers.

Any instance of a subject asking for an unconventional pronoun becomes a conversation between the reporter, the editor and the standards desk, said Philip B. Corbett, The Times’s associate masthead editor for standards. “There are two main goals: to be respectful to those we write about, and to be clear to our readers and avoid distracting them from the main point of an article,” Mr. Corbett wrote in a 2015 piece addressing this issue.

In some cases, a reporter finds a write-around, like avoiding pronouns altogether. Other times the reporter confronts the terminology head-on in the introduction or body of the article. But readers will never find an unheralded “thon” in the paper. The Times is not looking to lead the discussion, set the rules or break new ground, Mr. Corbett said. “Obviously that becomes tricky when usage is changing fast. That’s where we find ourselves now.”

Ms. Hartocollis’s latest article tells the story of a transgender student who fought for the right to use the locker room corresponding with her gender identity at her suburban Chicago high school, and won. The school district now faces a lawsuit from members of the community who are against the school’s decision. Pronoun accuracy was an ever-present backdrop to her reporting: “The kids talked passionately about what they called being misgendered and being misnamed,” Ms. Hartocollis said.

The power of language cannot be overstated. It can legitimize or it can dismiss. For instance, those who opposed the student’s access to the locker room deliberately referred to her with male pronouns in interviews, and court documents systematically refer to her as “he.” That discomfort, Ms. Hartocollis suggested, may be a symptom of a larger issue. The question of which pronoun to use “has many different layers,” she said. “They have to do with your inner self and the way society perceives you and your social status.”